Colossians 1:24-2:5

02/13/11

Colossians 1:24-2:5

Hudson UMC

There is always a certain amount of doubt about what exactly is going on in the communities to whom Paul sends his letters. Part of the reason for this is that we do not have any letters that people wrote to Paul, only what Paul wrote to them.  What this means is that, if we want to understand what was going on in a particular community, we have to do a kind of “mirror reading,” where we look at what Paul has to say and try to figure out the situation that provoked his letter.  This might seem at first glance that this is a remarkably arbitrary way of doing things and indeed I have raised this very issue in classes.  However, it isn’t as bad as you might think.  Paul wrote many letters that we have today.  We can compare and contrast what he says to one church with what he says to another church.  There is, understandably, a great deal of overlap between them, but there will often be one or two things he emphasizes in a particular letter that are simply not present in others.  When we look at what sets a particular letter apart, we have at least narrowed down our possibilities.

I say that because, when we look at Colossians, especially this passage, that way, we find an interesting issue that, the more I read the letter, the more I am convinced lies at the heart of the Colossian situation.  Paul uses the word “mystery” four times in Colossians, more than just about any letter.  Three of those times are in this passage.  Listen to how the word comes up in our text.  “I became its servant according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints.  To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory…I want [your] hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

If I were to try to say clearly and directly what I think is lying under the surface here, I would say this:  The Colossian Christians are very much interested in the mystery of God.  In fact, they are so interested in what they call the mystery of God that they are convinced that, at the end of the day, it is what really matters.  The only problem is that they don’t all agree on what the mystery of God is. 

As we will see from some of the next discussion, there seem to be two major ways people have been trying to know the mystery of God.  The first and most obvious we could say takes a Jewish form.  There seemed to be a revival of ancient Jewish practices in Colossae at the time, with people looking back at the Old Testament and saying, “Hey, God gave these commands to his people a long time ago.  Why aren’t we doing them, too?  If God commanded it, doesn’t it have to be good?”  Even if we, along with Paul, disagree with this, it has a certain logic to it.  The other way that people were trying to know the mystery of God was through pagan philosophy and cosmology.  We will hear more in the next passages about “the elemental spirits of the universe,” which is either referring to true paganism, a theory of the four elements, earth, fire, air and water, or the basis of a logical system.  To people who had lived so long in a pagan context, this tendency cannot possibly be surprising.

However, there is a deep problem with all of these ways of thinking.  After all, the Colossians that Paul is writing to are not just secular citizens of Greece, they are Christians.  When we look at the alternatives that are mentioned, Christ is conspicuously absent.  If these people are supposed to be Christians, shouldn’t Christ, perhaps, have something to say regarding their approach to God?  Paul obviously thought so.  After all, he just spent many verses praising Christ as the image of the invisible God, as the one in whom the fullness of deity was pleased to dwell, the one who reconciles us with God through his own blood.  To be a Christian and to try to find some way to God that somehow bypasses Christ is simply irrational.

Let’s take the three times that Paul uses the word “mystery” in this passage to see what he has to say about the matter.  “I became its servant according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints.”  Paul speaks of this mystery as having been around throughout all the ages, but has now been revealed in an unprecedented way.  What can he possibly be talking about?  He isn’t talking about a new system of theoretical ethics.  After all, if you look at what the earliest Christians believed about right and wrong, they were remarkably similar to what the Jews of their time believed.  Paul is not speaking about a fundamental change in what is right and what is wrong.  He is also not speaking of a shift in how we should approach practical ethics.  It is true that the earliest Christians were well-known as being particularly moral people, but, though they did tend to apply their ethics more completely in their lives, if we took each of their actions by itself, none of them were totally surprising.

The question that we need to ask is, “What has been around, in some hidden form, since the very beginning, but has now been revealed to the saints?”  The only answer that makes sense with Paul, is Christ.  To Paul, Christ has, in a sense, always been around, because all things were created in, through and for, him.  He is the Son of the one God of Israel, who has been with him since the very beginning, which means he has been present throughout the long history of Israel.  However, this Son of God, who has always existed in deep and dynamic fellowship with the Father and the Spirit, has been revealed among us as the man Jesus of Nazareth.

Now, if we look at Paul’s words again, it might be argued, “Paul is equating the mystery with the word of God, not with Jesus.”  The problem with this is that, in our modern American context, when we hear “the word of God,” the first thing that often comes to our mind is the Bible.  This way, when we hear that Paul wants to make the word of God fully known and that the word of God is indeed the mystery we are talking about, our tendency is to think that Paul wants to explain the Bible to us really really well.  However, one thing I hope you remember from the Gospel according to John is that Jesus is referred to as the Word of God who was with God and who was God.  When we realize that, when the New Testament speaks about the word of God, it is first and foremost speaking of the living word of God made flesh in Christ, we realize that, when Paul speaks about making the word of God fully known, he is saying that he wants the Colossians to know Christ, that it is devotion to Christ that will enable them to understand the mystery of God, for the mystery of God is Christ.

When we look at the next sentence, we see the second time Paul talks about mystery.  “To them, [that is, the saints,] God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”  At this point Paul is speaking, not so much about the mystery itself, but of the riches of the glory of this mystery.  When we look at what he says the riches of the glory of the mystery of God is, what do we find?  We find that these riches are Christ in us, the hope of glory.  This is incredibly important because, just as Paul’s point, that Christ the word of God is the mystery of God, is so important because people were hoping to find a deeper and more profound mystery than Christ, his point here, that the riches of the glory of this mystery is Christ in us, is important because it seems that the people wanted the glory of the mystery of God to be something greater, or at least different, than Christ in them.

The last time the word mystery appears in our passage is when Paul says, “I want [your] hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that [you] may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”  In ancient Greece, there were a huge number of religious and philosophical schools, where you could go and be instructed in a particular way of thinking and living.  If you didn’t like one school of thought, you could go to another.  If one group kicked you out, there was always another one to go to.  In fact, when Paul goes to Athens, the writer of Acts pokes fun at the people who lived in this center of learning.  “Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.”

Why were there so many different schools?  Why would people always be developing new ways of thinking and living?  A big part of the reason is that Greece was a nation that was full of people who had become so well organized that they had more free time than other people had, so they were able to dedicate more of their time to thinking about life, the universe, and everything.  The problem is that, once you start really thinking about the complexities of life, you realize that there is no end to the questions you could ask.  It is easy to confuse a new way to look at the universe with a genuine insight that brings you closer to the truth.  We have accounts from the early Christian centuries that various philosophers would modify the views of their schools ever so slightly, then found their own school, just so they could seem more important.  As a side note, it bears a striking resemblance to some of the splintering of the church that has happened in the past and is still happening now.

Part of the reason that people were and are so interested in new and different ways of thinking and living is because we have this sneaking suspicion that there is something more out there.  We seem to want something sufficiently simple that we know that we are capable of it but something sufficiently complex so that we can feel that we are actually doing something and so we can have a good reason to explain why some people don’t have the same insights that we do.  We deeply hope that truth is accessible to us but we also are fully convinced that knowing the truth means we have to make some serious changes to our life and way of thinking.

This is exactly what is happening in Colossae.  People have heard the good news of Jesus Christ, that God has come among us and has radically changed the way we relate to him, that somehow it is through Christ that we receive grace and are reconciled to God.  The only problem with this, at least in the eyes of the Colossians, is that it just seems too easy.  Where is the deep soul searching?  Where is the detailed and organized rule of life that we crave to be able to show the whole world that we know something that they need to know?  Surely, there must be something more; surely it cannot be that easy.

And yet, this is precisely what Paul is saying.  He has already, at the end of only one chapter, made extravagant claims about the centrality of Christ.  He is trying to show these people who want to follow Christ but feel the need to engage in all kinds of philosophy and ancient Jewish practices in order to really get at the mystery of God, that the only answer they need, indeed, the only answer there is, is Christ.  Paul is saying, in so many words, “There is no mystery of God beyond Christ.”  To push Christ out of the central place because he doesn’t fit our definition of what is sufficiently mysterious is to say to God, “You don’t seem to understand the mystery of God as well as I do.  You, after all, say that Christ is enough.  I disagree.”

What is Paul implying about the whole attempt to get behind Jesus through these other means?  If we were to paint it as strong as possible, it would be to say, “To engage in these other searches for truth when the real truth has been presented to you is to show that you have not yet come to know the truth.”  While that certainly gets at the root problem, Paul, in spite of his feisty nature, is not usually so harsh.  His words are not nearly so much geared at condemning those who are intentionally trying to throw the gospel out, but at showing compassion toward and giving guidance to those who have not yet understood the full implications of Christ.  The danger of substituting other things for Christ is very much real and we can see it all around us if we have eyes to see it, but we are not usually dealing with barefaced hypocrites who are actively trying to undermine the gospel, but people who need some help connecting all the dots.  I know this because I am just barely beginning to understand what Paul is saying here.

At the end of the day, when Paul emphasizes that the Colossians should not be looking for a mystery of God other than and beyond Christ, he is not saying that they should be satisfied with something less than ultimate, but that by doing so, they are avoiding the only one who really is ultimate.  Their understanding of truth in Christ is far too low.  In point of fact, to say that we have to be content with Christ, as if Christ is somehow something less than the most important thing in our world and lives is to show that we do not yet understand that, in Christ, the fullness of God has met with us and continues to meet with us.  To look for something deeper than Christ is to be looking for something that is deeper than God and we cannot be surprised that we don’t find anything like that because there is nothing like that.

Christ is indeed the very mystery of God.  He is a mystery that is at the same time truly revealed to us and really open to our knowledge, and yet utterly greater than we can ever think or imagine.  As we get further into the letter we will see some of the concrete ways that people were pushing Christ out of the center of their lives and we will consider some ways, that may even surprise us, that we do the same thing in our world today.  However, what is important is that, when we talk about Christ being central, we really mean it.  Christ is the mystery of God, the living Son of God who cannot be put into a box and who causes all of our hard and fast rules to be redefined in light of who he is.  He is the one absolute in this variable and shifting world.  He is the greatest example of the love, mercy, and utter self-giving compassion of God, and he is the one who empowers us day by day.  Let us rejoice that we have a God who has loved us so much that he has met us where we are and gives himself to us so completely.  Let us pray.

AMEN

Colossians 1:15-23

02/06/11

Colossians 1:15-23

Hudson UMC

When I first started seminary, I imagine I thought about the significance of the Trinity about as much as most everyone else does:  that is to say, I didn’t really think about it at all.  However, I spent my whole first year with Dr. Colyer, who has thought long and hard about the Trinity and showed me that John Wesley was actually much more concerned about the Trinity than we often think.  All of a sudden, I was confronted with the fact that something that I just kind of checked off my “to believe” list was actually fundamental to Christian faith.  It was an amazing experience.

At the beginning of my second year of school, I set myself to the task of finding out just exactly what lay at the very root of Christian faith.  What is it that we believe from which everything else flows?  I thought about it pretty hard for a couple of weeks.  Then, Alli and I were in the car and I exclaimed, “I’ve got it!”  She replied, “Got what?”  “I know what the single most important doctrine of Christian faith is.”  “Really?  What is it?”  And I said very seriously, “The Incarnation.”  Now, if you haven’t picked this up from me by now, the Incarnation is the technical term that is used to describe the fact that the God of the universe took on flesh and lived among us as the man Jesus.  Alli just looked at me and said, “Really, Travis?  Jesus?  Jesus is the most important part of Christianity?”  You see, even though I had struggled mentally to try to really get down to the roots of my faith and what I perceived to be the faith of the church throughout history, my conclusion wasn’t anything that a fourth grade Sunday School student couldn’t have told me.  Jesus is the most important part of Christianity.

It might sound incredibly simple and self-evident, but the more I think about it and the more I look at the world around me, the more I realize that this simple idea so easily gets swept under a rug, so easily gets forgotten, or rather, gets pushed to the side.  If you forget everything you learned growing up in the church, or, if you, like me, didn’t grow up in the church, forget everything you have learned in the church, and just looked at what gets talked about in our culture when they talk about Christianity, would you tend to get left with the idea that, when we talk about our faith, we are talking first and foremost about the centrality of Jesus to everything?  I don’t think you would.  I think that you would find two or three key issues that are probably moral and ethical in nature that tend to divide the nation, each side looking down on the other.

Why is it that when we, as a society, stand up for our faith, we end up standing up, not for the true divinity and true humanity of Christ, for the incredible love that God has for us that he would take on the brokenness of the world and heal it from the inside out, that we have been forgiven and so we show our gratitude by forgiving others, but for various aspects of legal policy, one way or the other?  I think it is because it is so easy to get worked up over what the culture is worked up about and it is hard to stay focused on central things when everyone around seems to be focused on peripheral things.

Believe it or not, this is exactly what was going on in the Colossian church.  We will see it more clearly as we continue through the letter, but the Colossian Christians seemed to be entirely obsessed with things other than Christ.  There were some who were insisting that, since Christianity began as a group within Judaism, that even Jesus was a Jew, for example, Christians can and indeed should engage in all of the ancient Jewish laws, not just the ones that deal with morality, but also with those that tell us what we should eat and what we can and cannot touch.  On the other side, there were those who understood that Jesus came so that God’s love might come to everyone, Gentiles as well as Jews.  Since God came and met them where they were, it seemed to mean that they could continue in all their pagan ways of thinking, considering their philosophical systems to be as important, or even more important than Christ.

Once we understand that Paul is responding to a tendency to push Jesus out of the central place because of some kind of ideology, whether Jewish or Gentile, whether moral or cultural, we can begin to understand just what he says in our passage for today.  It is, perhaps, one of the most beautiful and strong declarations of the centrality and significance of Christ in the entire Bible.  Speaking of Jesus, Paul says, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him.”  Here is Paul affirming in the strongest terms that Jesus is God.  One of the key things that the Jewish tradition in particular affirmed only God could do is create, and here is Paul saying that everything that was created was created in Christ, Christ is the one through whom the various rulers of the world were created, meaning that Christ is far greater than all of them put together.

“He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.”  The classical Jewish conviction was that, before we were alive, before our great-grandparents were alive, before our nation came into existence, before the mighty kingdoms of the ancient world rose and fell, before there was anything at all, there was God.  The question, “What was before God?” does not only meet with the answer, “Nothing.”  It is also seen as a totally irrational question.  To even ask the question means that we expect to find something that came before God and, since God has always been, it is an utterly meaningless question.

Think about what else this is saying.  It is saying that Jesus is the head of the body, the church.  It is Jesus who is finally in charge, he is the highest ranked person in the whole church, he is the one from whom the church draws its life.  Without Christ, there simply is no church.  Paul is also saying that Jesus is not just raised from the dead, but that he is the firstborn from the dead.  Though we talk about the resurrection, we need to always remember that, though Jesus was the first to be resurrected in glory, he won’t be the only one.  In fact, we are promised that each of us will participate in Christ’s resurrection before the end.  That is why, though we weep when a loved one dies, we do not grieve as if death were the end, for we hope in the power of the resurrection, that, just as God raised Christ from the dead, he will also raise us from the dead.

Now we move into the climax of Paul’s exclamation.  “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”  This is one of those statements in the Bible that is absolutely packed with meaning.  First, we read that, in Christ we have the very fullness of God dwelling among us.  We could spend all day unpacking that.  It means that in Christ we get to see who God really is.  Everything we saw Jesus doing in the Gospel of John was the very activity of God.  Jesus is not just a prophet, not just a great moral teacher, but truly the presence of God in our midst.  When we look into the face of Christ, we see the face of God, a face that we have never seen anywhere else and that we could not have seen any other way.

To a certain extent, if that is all that Jesus was and did, it would be enough.  In a world where we are surrounded by voices that tell us either that we can never know God because God is so far removed from us ordinary people or that God is whatever we choose to make God be, it is an amazing thing to have God meet with us in such a dynamic and personal way as he does in Christ.  Sometimes people get upset with Christian faith because it says, “If you want to know God, you need to know Jesus.”  People don’t like that, of course, because it seems so restrictive.  Why can’t we come to know God in a completely different way?  But if we are really dealing with a God who is so completely different than anything we know in our daily lives, the amazing thing is not that there aren’t many ways to know God, but that there is even one!  When we think about how amazing it is that, in Christ, we come face to face with God, we should be astonished that God has loved us so much that he has actually gone out of his way to meet with us, to show his love in a way we can understand, and give himself for us completely.

What is more is that this really shouldn’t be all that surprising to a culture that is so enamored with the natural sciences.  After all, if you want to investigate subatomic particles, you don’t get to make up your own mind how you are going to do it.  There are some ways that are simply incompatible with such an investigation.  You can’t look at atoms with a telescope nor with a standard microscope.  And yet, nobody complains that atomic theory is exclusive.  In any field of investigation, we have to go where we can encounter the reality we seek to know and we have to treat it in accordance with what it actually is, not what we wish it was or how we decided ahead of time how it would be fair if it was.

However, Jesus is not only the definitive revelation of God in our midst.  Jesus is also the means by which we, who live in this broken, hurting world, can be united to God and live with the very Spirit of God dwelling inside of us.  The language that Paul uses here is that Christ makes peace “through the blood of his cross.”  We live in a world that holds up self-sacrifice as the ultimate form of love and yet lives as if this made no difference because we tend to get caught up in our own problems.  But it is important that we remember that with Jesus, we are not just dealing with a great example of human love and mercy but with the incredible mercy and compassion of God.

What this means for our investigation of Colossians is that Paul is setting out the very most basic of Christian experience.  Whatever else might be different from congregation to congregation, all Christians are bound together by this basic encounter with God.  God has made peace with us.  It is a peace that only God could make but that, because of God’s amazing mercy and kindness, we are presented to God holy, blameless, and irreproachable.  This is crucially important.  This is the foundation upon which he will build the rest of his argument.  If Jesus is central and of primary importance, it means that absolutely nothing else can be.  It is as Scottish theologian, Thomas F. Torrance has said, “In the great hierarchy of truths, to be absolutely related to what is of permanent and paramount importance in the center, carries with it a requirement for us to be only relatively related to everything else.”

Paul finishes up this passage by reminding the Colossians that faith in God is not a blank check, as if we can say, “Well, now that I’ve made that decision and prayed that prayer, nothing else is required of me.”  He says, “Provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised in the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven.  I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel.”

This is, again, incredibly important to remember as we continue through this amazing letter.  Paul is going assert over and over again that Christ is primary, Christ is central and that, if we allow anything, even if it seems to be good, to take Christ’s utterly central place, we have effectively turned our back on the gospel.  He is so concerned that they “continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised in the gospel” because this is exactly what is happening in Colossae.  For some, Christ has been kicked out of his central place by Jewish ethical practices, which, while by no means externally evil, have become more important to those people than the living Son of God.  For others, it means that Christ has to stand in judgment over the way their pagan culture teaches them to think, which while, again, not overtly evil, tends to treat Christ as something considerably less than the way we have access to the mystery of God.

Indeed, we will see many more references to mystery and the mystery of God before our time in this letter is done.  I think that you will find that, the more we dig in to what was going on in Colossae, the more we begin to understand our own culture, both conservative and liberal, both young and old.  Some of the specifics have changed, but the Colossian culture is so close to what we see in our context today that it gives me goose bumps.

So, just as Paul wanted to remind the Colossians about the amazing majesty of God in Christ, through whom we have been made new before he gave his corrective advice, let us stop here and be deeply impressed by this fact.  We have a God who loves us and does not only love us in the abstract but in the concrete.  We have a God who does not just say loving things to us from his throne in heaven, but goes out of his way to leave that throne and meet with us where we are, to spill his own blood for us and our salvation, to suffer and endure much hardship just so that we, broken and sinful people though we are, get to be with him, both now and forever.  Our God is far greater than we can even imagine and what we learn about God in Christ continues to break through our preconceived notions and enrich our understanding and lives.  Let us go into the world in utter amazement at the love of God and let that amazement inspire us to share the good news we have received with others, for it is good news for them, as well.  Let us pray.

AMEN

Colossians 1:1-14

01/30/11

Colossians 1:1-14

Hudson UMC

After finishing up the book of John after two and a half years, it is possible that some of you might be worried that we are diving right into another book of the Bible, that of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, but I want to encourage you not to worry.  Colossians is only four chapters, compared to John’s twenty-one.  It is a much shorter book and will not take nearly as long to get through it and, in addition, we will have a nice break in the middle of it for Lent.  I pray that, just as we have learned much from exploring the life and teaching of Christ himself, we will gain just as much from the insights and practical application that Paul brings to the table.

As we begin to explore this new book, some words of introduction are in order.  Perhaps the most pressing question is, “Why do we care what Paul said to the Christian community in Colossae nearly two thousand years ago?  After all, we live in such a radically different time and place, could this letter really have anything to say to us?”  Of course it does.  Just like the words and actions of Christ are incredibly relevant in spite of the huge cultural difference between us and him, Paul’s words are still helpful, even in modern America.

In fact, Colossians is perhaps one of the very most contemporary books in the entire Bible.  Many of the issues that faced the Colossian church face us today.  The contents of the letter to the Colossians are the product of a deeply compassionate and carefully observant pastor and missionary.  Paul fits neatly into neither the traditional Jewish mold nor the traditional Gentile mold.  In spite of his sometimes fiery style, Paul is not one to run quickly into major topics, giving rash advice that is easily shown to be destructive.  Rather, what Paul has said has remarkably remained incredibly contemporary, showing that he had a profound grasp on the human condition and how the good news of Jesus Christ impacts us.

Our passage today doesn’t seem to be all that exciting.  Paul is more or less following the standard form of letter writing in the ancient Roman Empire.  One might say that Paul spends these first fourteen verses saying the equivalent of our modern, “Dear Colossian Christians.  How are you?  I hope you are well.  I met someone you know and I was glad to hear that you are being successful and that is good.  Isn’t God great?”

I say that one might say that because, though there is a nugget of truth to it, because Paul is indeed following some of the standard form for small talk at the beginning of a letter before he really gets into his point, but that is a really simplistic way to talk about it.  In itself, this passage does not tell us all the much.  It does not contain any deep theological arguments, nor does it give us any concrete advice on how to live more authentically as Christians.  If it stood by itself, there would not be much use in preaching a sermon on it.

However, these first fourteen verses indeed do not stand by themselves.  They are only the very beginning of a full-fledged letter to the Colossian Christians that will affirm, teach and challenge them.  Whenever you read one of Paul’s letters, you should look carefully at the first passage in them.  Those early verses almost always tell you something about what is going to come up later in more developed form.  Since we are just at the beginning of this letter, I am not going to try to go into an overly in-depth discussion of every single thing that Paul says, but I want to highlight a few major themes that he briefly indicates here.

The first thing I want to point out that might not be immediately obvious is that Paul did not plant the church in Colossae, though it is extremely likely that one of his close associates did.  This means that Paul is writing this letter to Christians he has never met.  This might seem insignificant but it is actually quite important.  Paul writes, “In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.”  Paul does not seem to hesitate for a moment to affirm and rejoice in churches that he did not found.  He does not have the same kind of denominationalism that we often have in our world.  He does not say that things have to be done his way if they are to be Christian.  He knows that God’s work is far greater than our own particular way of doing things.

What this means is that Paul has much to teach the modern church about ecumenical activity.  We all know that there are differences between different denominations but there are some groups of Christians who simply will not acknowledge other denominations but insist that they, or they and their friends, are the only true church.  I have seen this be a source of tremendous division within communities, when one church is simply denied legitimacy by another.  Paul will have none of this.  The real question that Paul would ask a church is, “Are you reconciled to God through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit?”  If the answer is “yes,” Paul will be in fellowship with you.

Paul continues on, saying, “For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.”  It seems that Paul, though he has not ever met the Colossian Christians, has heard about particular moral looseness that is incompatible with the Gospel.  This really wouldn’t be unusual for him.  His correspondence with the Corinthian church is almost entirely dealing with moral issues and he always spends some time in each of his letter encouraging the people to live lives worthy of God.

The question we need to ask is, “Why does he do this?”  Is it because Paul is, as he is so often portrayed, really a rigid moralist who just wants to make sure that we all live within the narrow confines of what he happens to define as “The Christian Life?”  In spite of the fact that Paul gets talked about this way, as if he had nothing he wanted to do more than tell people what to do and what not to do, it simply isn’t the case.  This is the Paul who was the first Christian leader to really take outreach to the Gentiles seriously.  Every move he made, every church he planted, was under intense scrutiny by both Jews and Gentiles.  If people who claimed to belong to Christ, the Son of God, and empowered by the Holy Spirit and indwelt by the very life of God were immoral people, what would happen?  The Jews would look at it and reject them because they knew the God of their ancestors far too well to acknowledge such immorality as consistent with claims to follow that God.  The Gentiles would look at it and raise the logical question, “You don’t live any differently than the rest of the culture does.  Who cares about your God?”  Paul did not want the behavior of Christians to push people away from Christ.

What is amazing is that these two concerns have not gone away.  There are many branches of the church who consider the mainline churches, of which the United Methodist Church is one, to be morally reprehensible.  In their eyes, mainline Christians don’t seem to realize that our God is a holy God and that we are called to a life of holiness that characterizes everything we do.  Now, it is entirely possible that such branches are equating the holiness of God with their particular culture’s narrow understanding of morality, but the point is that we cannot even begin to have that conversation because the mainline has not exactly always been as holy as we have claimed to be.  On the other side, I think we are faced with the even stronger critique, one that I think is far more widespread and far more serious as we move into an increasingly secular age.  More and more we have people who are growing up without any involvement in the church, who don’t even know the basic convictions of the Christian faith, who only know Jesus from what they see on television, which I must admit, is not often a good representation of what the great tradition of the church has believed.  They ask, “If so many people who claim to follow Christ do so many hurtful things, why should I be one of them?”  The conclusion is often to try to follow Christ without having anything to do with the church or, what is more often the case, avoid Jesus altogether.

What I want to point out here is that we get to see here a key theme in Pauline ethics.  Our knowledge of God in Christ is never isolated from behavior but must permeate every part of it.  People often make the distinction between knowing things with your head and knowing them with your heart.  I completely agree with the point that they are trying to make.  Knowing information is not the same as feeling it deep in the core of your being.  However, Paul does not make that kind of distinction.  Where many people might say that someone knows something with their head but not their heart, Paul simply would say that they do not really know it at all.  Real knowledge of God challenges us and transforms us.  If what we call knowledge of God does not do that, it is simply not real knowledge at all.  Every single time Paul makes a moral exhortation, it is within the context of a larger theological discussion.  When we get to the point in Colossians where he speaks about things like what wives, husbands, children, masters and slaves should do, we must never think that he is making general statements but we need to always remember that they are deeply rooted in what he has said about God and the Gospel and must be understood in that light.

Another major point to bring up here is that Paul is writing this letter not primarily as an authoritarian teacher or even as a theologian, though he is indeed a great theologian.  He is writing this first and foremost as Paul the pastor.  He says, “May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.”  Even though Paul is going to challenge the Colossian church and even though there will be points where that challenge comes in a rather pointed manner, his real goal is to build up the body of Christ and glorify God.  He is not the one who founded this church so their success does not point directly back to him.  Paul is, quite simply, passionately concerned about the health of all Christians and Christian communities.

The last few verses of our passage go a long way in giving us a kind of “heads up” to what is coming in the rest of the letter.  “[The Father] has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”  What we will find, especially in the first two chapters of the letter, is that the emphasis in Colossians is overwhelmingly on the centrality of Christ.  This centrality is emphasized in a variety of ways:  critiquing hidden cultural assumptions, ethical practices, the arrangement of Christian households, and prayer.  Every part of the letter is rooted in Paul’s unwavering conviction that Jesus is absolutely central to the Christian life and that any time we allow Christ to be pushed out of his central place by something else, anything else, we are missing the point.

Through studying the letter of Paul to the Colossians, we will be brought face to face with many aspects of our own lives that often remain unexamined.  Again, I think one would be hard pressed to find another book of the Bible that so directly applies to our social and cultural situation than Colossians.  So many of the struggles that were taking place in that time and place are happening here now as well.  If we set ourselves to listening carefully to Paul, it will be a challenging time, but, by God’s grace, we will emerge more firmly grounded in Christ our foundation than ever before.  Let us pray.

AMEN

John 21:20-25

01/23/11

John 21:20-25

Hudson UMC

On July twenty-seventh, two thousand eight, we began a journey through the Gospel according to John.  Since that time, except for taking breaks for seasons like Advent and Lent, we have continued on, passage by passage, working our way through the whole of this Gospel, getting a chance to take a careful look at every story, every teaching, and every event in this entire book.  Speaking personally, I can say that my whole approach to preaching, to understanding the Bible, and communicating the truth of Jesus Christ has grown radically.  Not every congregation would have the patience to go with their pastor through such a large chunk of Scripture, so I want to begin this final sermon on John by giving thanks for you who have born with me through this whole time, showing support, even if you were getting sick and tired of John.  There is, perhaps, no greater gift you could give to me as a preacher than to allow me the luxury of two and a half years to learn how to approach the gospel message in a way that arises organically out of the gospel itself.  I can only pray that you have heard the word of God during this time and learned more deeply the love that God has for you.

Indeed, when we look at this last passage of John, we see that it has some remarkable similarities to the very first passage of the book.  The very first thing that John tells us after speaking of the pre-existence of Christ as the word who was with God and who was God is about John the Baptist whose whole ministry and purpose was to point beyond himself to Christ.  Back in chapter one, we read, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.  He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.  He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.  The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”

Just a little later in the first chapter, we continue to read about John the Baptist.  “This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’  He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’  And they asked him, ‘What then?  Are you Elijah?’  He said, ‘I am not.’  ‘Are you the prophet?’  He answered, ‘No.’  Then they said to him, ‘Who are you?  Let us have an answer for those who sent us.  What do you say about yourself?’  He said, ‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord.’ As the prophet Isaiah said.”  Indeed, when asked why he baptized people if he was not any of those people, his response was that someone was coming who was far greater than he was.  The implication is that this coming one is the one who really matters.

The reason why I want to remind you of all that happened in the very first chapter is because the idea is repeated again here in the last verse of the gospel.  “But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”  What this is saying is that, in spite of the fact that this book was written, as it even tells us itself, “so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name,” it is only a small portion of what Jesus did while he was on earth.  This cannot surprise us because we have three other gospels, which are quite different than John’s.  We know that every time we tell the story of Jesus, it is going to be an abbreviation.  We can only hit the highlights, so to speak.  However, what we must not do is think that Jesus only did things that were completely captured in words on a page.  Jesus is far bigger than that.

Even though the Gospel of John was not written by John the Baptist, there are remarkable similarities about how they see their ministry.  Neither one of them see themselves as the truth, or even the bringer of truth.  Both of them see Jesus as being far greater than they are.  Neither is content with us knowing a lot of information about Jesus but are not satisfied until we look away from them and to Jesus himself, actually encountering the word of God become flesh and living among us.  John the Baptist said, “He must increase, but I must decrease,” because to focus on him instead of the Christ to whom he bore witness would defeat the whole purpose of his ministry.  John the evangelist, or Gospel writer, says that the whole world could not contain the works and sayings of Christ.  To him, Jesus is far greater than the greatest work of literature, far greater than the most outstanding moral teachings, more life-changing than a book on your shelf.  Jesus is not a doctrine, not story, but a living and active person who, though he was crucified, was resurrected in glory and now sits at the right hand of God the Father, always active in the world through his Holy Spirit.

In a world where Christian faith is increasingly hated and spoken evil against, where the church itself tends to either lapse into a rigid and literalist approach to the Bible or fall away from any kind of rooting in Scripture, these words closing the Gospel of John are so very important.  The Bible was written, not first and foremost as a handbook that will somehow solve every problem you have in your life, but as a witness to the everlasting love, grace and mercy of God.  It is interesting to notice that, when John lays out what he wants us to gain from his work, it is not that we would have a definitive list of what to do and what not to do, it is not to replace our minds and make us all think and speak alike, but so that we might look through the text and come to know the God that the text bears witness to.

I am not one who usually goes out of my way to lift up something that John Calvin said, but he had a very helpful way to think about the Bible.  He spoke of the Scriptures as like a pair of spectacles or glasses.  Those of you who, like me, wear glasses, should understand this image easily.  When you wear glasses, the goal is not to look carefully at the glasses, but to look through them at what lies beyond them.  Similarly, the reason that we read the Bible, at least according to people like John the apostle, is in order to know the Jesus to whom it bears witness.  To focus so intently at the words on the page so that we miss the actual, living Christ would be as foolish as to focus so much on the glasses themselves that we miss the world that we got the glasses to see.

I have been reading a book by a philosopher of science and physician named Michael Polanyi, who makes a distinction between being focally aware of something, where our attention is fully directed to it, and being subsidiarily aware of something, where we know it is there but it is not the focus of our attention.  For example, when we learn to read, we first learn the letters of the alphabet, then we learn individual words, then we learn how sentences and paragraphs work.  However, when we actually sit down to read something, like a letter or a book, we know that we are reading letters, words, sentences and paragraphs, but what we are really concerned with is the meaning that the author is trying to convey.

In a similar way, the Bible is written, so it is made up of letters, words, sentences and paragraphs, but we are really concerned with what lies behind the text, the meaning, or what the author is hoping to get across to us.  In the case of John’s Gospel, we read in order to somehow get through the text to the reality it refers to, that is, to actually encounter Christ.  If we were to read with our primary goal being to know the letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs, it would be like focusing on the mechanics of walking, rather than focusing on where we are going.  It leads to self-conscious and awkward behavior.

So, all of this is to say that, if you have learned nothing else during this journey through John, I hope that you have not been content to stop at the text, but to meet with the Jesus to whom the text bears witness.  Since my very first day serving this church, I have hoped to communicate a passion for the Bible but I hope that you have not gotten the idea that I think that we should have a high view of the Bible merely as a book for its own sake.  I fully agree with John the Baptist, that we must decrease and that Christ must increase, for it is Christ, in the end, that matters.  I fully agree with John the apostle, that the Jesus we worship is far greater, far more dynamic than a mere book can capture and that we only succeed in hearing the gospel if we encounter Christ and are lives are changed.  I fully agree with John Calvin that our whole purpose in reading the Bible is not to know words, but to know God.

I do want to touch on the other part of our passage which, in many ways, is a follow-up to our passage from last week.  Peter has just been told that he will suffer and die for his faith, that he will follow in the footsteps of Christ to crucifixion.  What Peter does after that and how Jesus responds is very helpful for us to remember in our own lives of faith.  “Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them…When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, ‘Lord, what about him?’  Jesus said to him, ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?  Follow me!’”

Peter was just told something very difficult, that his days were numbered and that he would follow his Lord into a very painful death.  He naturally wants to know what will happen to this other close friend of Jesus.  Will he be martyred, too?  As history shows us, John was indeed not killed for his faith, one of only two of the apostles who were not martyrs.  What is interesting is that, because John was not executed, we cannot say that all true followers of Christ will be killed.  However, Jesus does not tell Peter that John would escape the fate that he had just predicted for him.  After all, what difference would it make?  If John was to die like Peter, it would not make Peter’s life any easier.  What Jesus does, though, is say, in so many words, “Peter, it just isn’t any of your business.  What happens to John is between John and myself.  You only need to worry about what will happen to you, and that is all you need to know.”

As we live our lives as disciples of Christ, we need to always remember that Jesus calls each of us to respond and nobody else can respond for us.  Also, when we define “fair” as how we modern Western Americans often define it, God is not particularly “fair,” either.  This is shown in the fact that while Peter and John were both faithful, were both great leaders of the church, one of them met an untimely end and the other did not.  What did Peter do to deserve execution, or, to put it the other way, what did John do to avoid it?  The gospel does not recognize questions like that because it is only a small step from that to, “How can I be a disciple and not have to suffer?”  If we are asking that question, we are not yet given fully to Christ.

As we finish up the gospel of John, we need to remember the major lessons of the gospel.  Some were made explicitly, some were implied, but all of them are important.  John has taught us that Jesus is the very Son and Word of God made a human being for our sakes, that God condescended to become one of us and one with us, to live a human life, to endure the brokenness of this world, and to die on our behalf and in our place, so that we might have eternal life.  John insists that the way that so many people speak of eternal life, that it is something that we make a decision for now and then we get pie in the sky by and by, is dead wrong, that the mighty acts of God impact us even here and now and have radical implications for how we live our lives.

John reminds us that Jesus is indeed the fullness of God in our midst and that, though Jesus is no longer around for us to see with our eyes and touch with our hands, we have not been left as orphans.  The Holy Spirit, who is every bit as much God as the Father and the Son, has been given to us to continue to unpack everything that Jesus said and did, to take the things of Christ and give them to us, to bind us to Christ like branches on a vine, and to make the blood of Christ pump in our veins.

So, as we say “goodbye” to John and move into a season of considering what Paul has to tell us through his letter to the Colossians, let us take the lessons that we have learned from John and let them penetrate deeply into our hearts and lives, that we might build on them and show that we really have learned from them.  God has called each of us and has called all of each of us.  Let us go forth and worship this Christ who cannot be contained by the words of a book, but who constantly surpasses even our greatest thoughts.  Let us give everything to the God who has given us everything.  Let us pray.

AMEN

John 21:20-25

01/23/11

John 21:20-25

Hudson UMC

On July twenty-seventh, two thousand eight, we began a journey through the Gospel according to John.  Since that time, except for taking breaks for seasons like Advent and Lent, we have continued on, passage by passage, working our way through the whole of this Gospel, getting a chance to take a careful look at every story, every teaching, and every event in this entire book.  Speaking personally, I can say that my whole approach to preaching, to understanding the Bible, and communicating the truth of Jesus Christ has grown radically.  Not every congregation would have the patience to go with their pastor through such a large chunk of Scripture, so I want to begin this final sermon on John by giving thanks for you who have born with me through this whole time, showing support, even if you were getting sick and tired of John.  There is, perhaps, no greater gift you could give to me as a preacher than to allow me the luxury of two and a half years to learn how to approach the gospel message in a way that arises organically out of the gospel itself.  I can only pray that you have heard the word of God during this time and learned more deeply the love that God has for you.

Indeed, when we look at this last passage of John, we see that it has some remarkable similarities to the very first passage of the book.  The very first thing that John tells us after speaking of the pre-existence of Christ as the word who was with God and who was God is about John the Baptist whose whole ministry and purpose was to point beyond himself to Christ.  Back in chapter one, we read, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.  He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.  He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.  The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”

Just a little later in the first chapter, we continue to read about John the Baptist.  “This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’  He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’  And they asked him, ‘What then?  Are you Elijah?’  He said, ‘I am not.’  ‘Are you the prophet?’  He answered, ‘No.’  Then they said to him, ‘Who are you?  Let us have an answer for those who sent us.  What do you say about yourself?’  He said, ‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord.’ As the prophet Isaiah said.”  Indeed, when asked why he baptized people if he was not any of those people, his response was that someone was coming who was far greater than he was.  The implication is that this coming one is the one who really matters.

The reason why I want to remind you of all that happened in the very first chapter is because the idea is repeated again here in the last verse of the gospel.  “But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”  What this is saying is that, in spite of the fact that this book was written, as it even tells us itself, “so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name,” it is only a small portion of what Jesus did while he was on earth.  This cannot surprise us because we have three other gospels, which are quite different than John’s.  We know that every time we tell the story of Jesus, it is going to be an abbreviation.  We can only hit the highlights, so to speak.  However, what we must not do is think that Jesus only did things that were completely captured in words on a page.  Jesus is far bigger than that.

Even though the Gospel of John was not written by John the Baptist, there are remarkable similarities about how they see their ministry.  Neither one of them see themselves as the truth, or even the bringer of truth.  Both of them see Jesus as being far greater than they are.  Neither is content with us knowing a lot of information about Jesus but are not satisfied until we look away from them and to Jesus himself, actually encountering the word of God become flesh and living among us.  John the Baptist said, “He must increase, but I must decrease,” because to focus on him instead of the Christ to whom he bore witness would defeat the whole purpose of his ministry.  John the evangelist, or Gospel writer, says that the whole world could not contain the works and sayings of Christ.  To him, Jesus is far greater than the greatest work of literature, far greater than the most outstanding moral teachings, more life-changing than a book on your shelf.  Jesus is not a doctrine, not story, but a living and active person who, though he was crucified, was resurrected in glory and now sits at the right hand of God the Father, always active in the world through his Holy Spirit.

In a world where Christian faith is increasingly hated and spoken evil against, where the church itself tends to either lapse into a rigid and literalist approach to the Bible or fall away from any kind of rooting in Scripture, these words closing the Gospel of John are so very important.  The Bible was written, not first and foremost as a handbook that will somehow solve every problem you have in your life, but as a witness to the everlasting love, grace and mercy of God.  It is interesting to notice that, when John lays out what he wants us to gain from his work, it is not that we would have a definitive list of what to do and what not to do, it is not to replace our minds and make us all think and speak alike, but so that we might look through the text and come to know the God that the text bears witness to.

I am not one who usually goes out of my way to lift up something that John Calvin said, but he had a very helpful way to think about the Bible.  He spoke of the Scriptures as like a pair of spectacles or glasses.  Those of you who, like me, wear glasses, should understand this image easily.  When you wear glasses, the goal is not to look carefully at the glasses, but to look through them at what lies beyond them.  Similarly, the reason that we read the Bible, at least according to people like John the apostle, is in order to know the Jesus to whom it bears witness.  To focus so intently at the words on the page so that we miss the actual, living Christ would be as foolish as to focus so much on the glasses themselves that we miss the world that we got the glasses to see.

I have been reading a book by a philosopher of science and physician named Michael Polanyi, who makes a distinction between being focally aware of something, where our attention is fully directed to it, and being subsidiarily aware of something, where we know it is there but it is not the focus of our attention.  For example, when we learn to read, we first learn the letters of the alphabet, then we learn individual words, then we learn how sentences and paragraphs work.  However, when we actually sit down to read something, like a letter or a book, we know that we are reading letters, words, sentences and paragraphs, but what we are really concerned with is the meaning that the author is trying to convey.

In a similar way, the Bible is written, so it is made up of letters, words, sentences and paragraphs, but we are really concerned with what lies behind the text, the meaning, or what the author is hoping to get across to us.  In the case of John’s Gospel, we read in order to somehow get through the text to the reality it refers to, that is, to actually encounter Christ.  If we were to read with our primary goal being to know the letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs, it would be like focusing on the mechanics of walking, rather than focusing on where we are going.  It leads to self-conscious and awkward behavior.

So, all of this is to say that, if you have learned nothing else during this journey through John, I hope that you have not been content to stop at the text, but to meet with the Jesus to whom the text bears witness.  Since my very first day serving this church, I have hoped to communicate a passion for the Bible but I hope that you have not gotten the idea that I think that we should have a high view of the Bible merely as a book for its own sake.  I fully agree with John the Baptist, that we must decrease and that Christ must increase, for it is Christ, in the end, that matters.  I fully agree with John the apostle, that the Jesus we worship is far greater, far more dynamic than a mere book can capture and that we only succeed in hearing the gospel if we encounter Christ and are lives are changed.  I fully agree with John Calvin that our whole purpose in reading the Bible is not to know words, but to know God.

I do want to touch on the other part of our passage which, in many ways, is a follow-up to our passage from last week.  Peter has just been told that he will suffer and die for his faith, that he will follow in the footsteps of Christ to crucifixion.  What Peter does after that and how Jesus responds is very helpful for us to remember in our own lives of faith.  “Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them…When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, ‘Lord, what about him?’  Jesus said to him, ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?  Follow me!’”

Peter was just told something very difficult, that his days were numbered and that he would follow his Lord into a very painful death.  He naturally wants to know what will happen to this other close friend of Jesus.  Will he be martyred, too?  As history shows us, John was indeed not killed for his faith, one of only two of the apostles who were not martyrs.  What is interesting is that, because John was not executed, we cannot say that all true followers of Christ will be killed.  However, Jesus does not tell Peter that John would escape the fate that he had just predicted for him.  After all, what difference would it make?  If John was to die like Peter, it would not make Peter’s life any easier.  What Jesus does, though, is say, in so many words, “Peter, it just isn’t any of your business.  What happens to John is between John and myself.  You only need to worry about what will happen to you, and that is all you need to know.”

As we live our lives as disciples of Christ, we need to always remember that Jesus calls each of us to respond and nobody else can respond for us.  Also, when we define “fair” as how we modern Western Americans often define it, God is not particularly “fair,” either.  This is shown in the fact that while Peter and John were both faithful, were both great leaders of the church, one of them met an untimely end and the other did not.  What did Peter do to deserve execution, or, to put it the other way, what did John do to avoid it?  The gospel does not recognize questions like that because it is only a small step from that to, “How can I be a disciple and not have to suffer?”  If we are asking that question, we are not yet given fully to Christ.

As we finish up the gospel of John, we need to remember the major lessons of the gospel.  Some were made explicitly, some were implied, but all of them are important.  John has taught us that Jesus is the very Son and Word of God made a human being for our sakes, that God condescended to become one of us and one with us, to live a human life, to endure the brokenness of this world, and to die on our behalf and in our place, so that we might have eternal life.  John insists that the way that so many people speak of eternal life, that it is something that we make a decision for now and then we get pie in the sky by and by, is dead wrong, that the mighty acts of God impact us even here and now and have radical implications for how we live our lives.

John reminds us that Jesus is indeed the fullness of God in our midst and that, though Jesus is no longer around for us to see with our eyes and touch with our hands, we have not been left as orphans.  The Holy Spirit, who is every bit as much God as the Father and the Son, has been given to us to continue to unpack everything that Jesus said and did, to take the things of Christ and give them to us, to bind us to Christ like branches on a vine, and to make the blood of Christ pump in our veins.

So, as we say “goodbye” to John and move into a season of considering what Paul has to tell us through his letter to the Colossians, let us take the lessons that we have learned from John and let them penetrate deeply into our hearts and lives, that we might build on them and show that we really have learned from them.  God has called each of us and has called all of each of us.  Let us go forth and worship this Christ who cannot be contained by the words of a book, but who constantly surpasses even our greatest thoughts.  Let us give everything to the God who has given us everything.  Let us pray.

AMEN

John 21:15-19

01/16/11

John 21:15-19

Hudson UMC

As we come down to the second to last passage in the entire Gospel of John, we find an incredible text that has so many layers to it.  We have Jesus having a conversation with one of his disciples, Simon Peter, the one who becomes one of the most dynamic and powerful leaders of all of Christian history.  What we overhear in this text is powerful, often surprising, but truly good news.

Jesus asks Peter if he loves him three times, each time getting the response that Peter does, indeed, love him.  The interesting thing is that these questions were asked one right after the other, in quick succession.  Not only does Jesus do this odd thing, we read that Peter felt quite uncomfortable.  When he was asked the third time, we read, “Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’  And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’”

It seems that there is a very strong connection between these three times that Jesus asks Peter if he loves him and the three times that Peter had rejected him when he was betrayed.  Many have pointed out throughout the years that Peter’s threefold denial was effectively “undone” by this threefold confession.  Once he had said that he did not even know Christ three times in a short period of time; now, he has confessed that he loves Christ three times in an even shorter period of time.  However, in spite of his repeated declaration of faith, Peter was hurt when he was asked the third time.  It seems that, when he was asked this third time, when he realized that Jesus was making a connection with the three times that he had denied Christ only a few days before, he was saddened.  After all, it was not long ago when Peter pledged his undying loyalty to Jesus only to turn around and reject him in a matter of hours.  Even recently, Peter had rejected his life with Christ to return to fishing.  His sadness at being asked a third time might just be related to the fact that his recent actions have not exactly backed up his claim to love Jesus.

And yet, in spite of all the feelings of hypocrisy that Peter might have at this point, we do not get, even for a moment, that Jesus’ asking of this question is meant to condemn him. Jesus has come in compassion, to undo Peter’s guilt.  I cannot imagine that there is anything but compassion behind his actions.  And yet Peter still ends up feeling hurt.  In many ways, this is what we saw throughout the season of Advent.  When God draws close to human beings, there is sometimes pain or discomfort, but this is healing and not punishment, thought it can feel like punishment at times.  Given our basic experience, it seems odd that we could believe that the healing of our lives could truly be painless.  So many forms of medical healing involve discomfort to one degree or another.  Surgery is painful for many days, the setting of a broken limb can be quite painful, at least without pain medicine, chemotherapy is remarkably uncomfortable, and we could list many others.  Peter’s guilt is being undone, yet his feelings are hurt.  It seems to me that, if even Jesus could not bring healing without discomfort, sometimes, we are just going to have to deal with the fact that healing might be unpleasant, but it is indeed healing and it is better to be healed and uncomfortable for a time than to remain broken and feel terrible forever.

When we turn to the actual question that Jesus asked Peter, we are left with some interesting reflections.  Jesus asks Peter if he loves him “more than these.”  The question is what, exactly, are “these?”  There are a few options, and we will look at two of them.  It could be that, since Jesus and the disciples have just finished up a breakfast of bread and fish and that there was an enormous catch of fish sitting right in front of them, that Jesus wants to know if Peter loves him more than fish and the whole fishing lifestyle.  Effectively, Jesus would be asking if he was more important to Peter than his livelihood and his entire old way of life.

This is a very serious question, not least because the beginning of this chapter certainly implied that Peter might very well not love Christ more than fishing.  After all, after seeing the risen Lord and witnessing the miracle of the resurrection, he turned around and went right back out to the way things were before, the way things have always been.  In the context of the entire Gospel of John, to somehow choose fish over the living Lord who gives us the Holy Spirit and unites us to himself so that we might know the Father and have eternal life would be a completely ridiculous and irrational choice.  And yet, this question, whether we would, at the end of the day, be willing to choose Christ over our comfortable way of living and our job, at least when taken out of the story of Peter and put into our lives, is not such an easy and obvious decision.  And yet, this decision is precisely what Jesus is asking Peter to make.  Unlike many of us, who will go our whole lives without being forced to choose between our job and Christ, Peter had to do exactly that.  This is not simply a question of priorities that we may or may not actually follow through on, but a call to absolutely radical obedience.

Another layer of meaning is that it is entirely possible that Jesus is asking Peter if he loves him more than the other disciples that are sitting around the charcoal fire with them.  This would mean that Jesus is asking Peter, “Do you love me more than these people, your brothers?”  This might very well surprise us.  After all, shouldn’t we love one another?  Indeed we should, but Jesus insists here that he be loved above anything else and for his own sake.

It almost seems like something that we read in the Gospel of Luke.  Jesus had just told a parable where a rich man had invited people to come to a banquet.  When the time came for the dinner, he sent for his guests but each and every one of them refused him, making excuse after excuse.  In response, the man became angry and filled his hall with the poor and crippled and blind and lame.  After that, Jesus told the crowd, “If anyone comes to me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”  Just like Jesus insists on coming before even our jobs and our livelihood, he insists on coming before even our family and friends.

However, though I do not wish to do what so many others have done and explain away the strong language that Jesus uses, I am convinced that we cannot stop reading here or else we will misunderstand what Jesus is really saying to us.  This whole passage is about Jesus asking Peter if he loves him.  Each time he is asked, Peter says that he does, indeed, love Jesus.  Jesus’ response every time is that, because Peter loves him, he must feed his sheep, which is to say, he must take care of Jesus’ people, to love and serve the church.

What this means is that it is because we love Jesus above and beyond anyone else that we obey his command to love those other people.  This is something that I think pastors especially need to remember every day.  I must admit that I am not always particularly good at loving people.  Like many pastors, I am very much introverted.  It is hard for me to go out of my way to show love to others.  And yet, as a Christian, and even more, as a Christian pastor, I can never sit content because, since I love Jesus, I am called to love his people.  Because I love Christ, I am also called to love the church, the body of Christ.  To claim to love Jesus and then not love his people is pure hypocrisy.  The church is often called the bride of Christ.  To say I love Christ but hate the church is like saying to someone, “I think you are great, but I simply cannot stand your wife.”  A love like that cannot possibly be what Jesus wants.

However, though this call to feed Christ’s sheep is something that demands our obedience, it is not merely a duty, for we are not just called to serve others or to take care of others, but to love them, which means that our whole hearts and lives must be changed.  Love is not something that you can fake; it is not something that you can just wake up one day and make a decision to do.  In many ways, to love others is something that is quite out of our power because, if we do it, it is the most natural thing in the world, and if we don’t do it, no amount of willpower can make it happen.  And yet, Jesus demands it of us nonetheless.  It is a call that depends entirely on the one who gives it.  The only way we can love God’s people like we are called to love them is if we can somehow share in Christ’s own love for his people.  This is why we need the Holy Spirit.  Without the Spirit, any love we manage to have for other people is just a human emotion.  With the Spirit, we are taken to share in the love and life of Christ so that our heart begins to beat for the things that make Christ’s heart beat, our hearts are broken by what breaks God’s heart, and we are truly made to be part of Christ’s body.

I want to draw attention to the last words of this passage, so near to the end of the whole book.  Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished.  But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.  (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.)  After this he said to him, Follow me.”

It is crucial to notice that Jesus does not leave Peter with a rosy conclusion, as if he were to say, “Follow me and you will have easy and happy times from here on out.”  Rather, Jesus reveals that Peter was going to be killed for his faith.  Indeed, John tells us that, at the time of his writing, this has already happened.  For those who do not already know, Peter did indeed die for his faith, he did indeed die and his death glorified God.  Peter was taken by the authorities and sentenced to crucifixion.  Peter, however, did not consider himself to be worthy to die the same was as Jesus his Lord did, so he was crucified upside-down.  However, don’t get the idea that Peter went weeping and in despair to his death.  He faced it fearlessly, being concerned, not to die, but only to die in the same was as Jesus did.

We cannot say to Jesus, “I love you,” and then put conditions on what he may demand of us.  To say, “I will follow you, so long as you do not call me to do anything particularly difficult,” is to say that we, in fact, do not love Jesus more than these,  However, Jesus, even in the seriousness of this conversation, does not only speak a word of warning.  He invites Peter to follow him.  He informs Peter that he is not calling him to anything other than what he himself has suffered and endured.  To follow Jesus may indeed mean that we will follow him into death, but it also means that we will follow him into resurrection and life everlasting.

That is the amazing part of Jesus’ words, “follow me.”  When Jesus calls us to follow him, he does not usually tell us what will happen in our life of obedience, and it is a good thing that he doesn’t.  Most likely, we would either think that God’s plans for us are too mundane and get depressed that we don’t get the glory that we want, or else we would be so overwhelmed by the majesty of our calling that we would become arrogant.  Indeed, if we were told what Peter was told, we might even recoil in fear, being told that we would not die naturally, but be executed for our faith and devotion.  When Jesus says, “follow me,” there is no promise of earthly prosperity, that somehow everything will go right, neither is there a promise of earthly hardship, that somehow everything will go wrong.  Jesus calls us with no conditions, no limitations.  It is as we remembered in our celebration of Wesley’s covenant renewal service two weeks ago.

“Commit yourselves to Christ as his servants.  Give yourselves to him, that you may belong to him.  Christ has many services to be done.  Some are more easy and honorable, others are more difficult and disgraceful.  Some are suitable to our inclinations and interests, others are contrary to both.  In some we may please Christ and please ourselves.  But then there are other works where we cannot please Christ except by denying ourselves.”

We have baptized an infant today.  We all, as a congregation, have reaffirmed our devotion and love to God, a love that compels us to renounce the evil ways of the world and to give ourselves to Christ completely.  We also celebrate that, long before Gabriel was born, he was called by God.  We do not know what lies in the future for him, or indeed for any of us.  It may be that we are called to follow Peter in following Christ.  It may be that our life may be marked with sorrow.  It may be that we will be like John as we will see next week, and live long in the Lord, being an example for all.  We do not know.  What we do know, however, is that each of us, including Gabriel, are bound to Christ with a love that will not let us go and that the God who loved us and gave himself for us will never abandon us, but will walk with us every single day.  Let us pray.

AMEN